"Resurrected from the depths of space in the early 2010's, is a game that takes you through a journey of self-discovery, autonomy, and of course, friendship."

*Adapted from itch.io

Code of Mars is a 5 hour-ish RPG, in the old-school style of the turn-based classics, with a slight twist: fights are faster, attacks can be dodged manually, and the effects of your abilities are totally customizable. As a mere field researcher, an unwitting discovery ends up taking your character on an adventure to find their friends, and possibly save the people of the planet.

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Originally an "edutainment" title conceived during my old university days, Code Of Mars had been intended to simultaneously present a fully-realized age-old tale of Technology versus Magic, and deliver to students the fundamentals of I.T. theory. Since then, the educational elements have been scrapped for the release to the greater public, however the best remnant of that is arguably the Skill Programming system.  Players are given the ability to customize their character's skills via rudimentary "block" programming, which a lot of you devs out there should feel somewhat at-home with.

For classic RPG players; simply imagine if you could take the "Fire" spell from a Final Fantasy game, and have it apply a Slow as well.

Or maybe you want your favorite defense buff to be AOE instead of single-target, and heal on top of that.

Perhaps you want to make it so that every time you take more than 100 damage, your character automatically uses said buff.

Or maybe you just want to make it so that your character's basic attack does 5000 damage when it's usually supposed to do 50.

With the right resources and a little bit of customization; you can make it happen.

The specific elements of the combat system are shared in the previous Bopstik release of similar name, "Code Of Arms", but Code Of Mars itself is actually the older of the two games, development-wise. Those who just want to jump right into the intensely fast, ATB-esque Battle System without going through a narrative, Code of Arms is probably what you'd prefer.

Various other games from various different times have acted as inspiration for this title over the years. Years of start-and-stop development on what would otherwise be a simple and easily churned out RPG for larger indie companies.

Still...despite all the fatigue of looking at the game for years of testing in scant spare time, Code Of Mars still manages to get chuckles out of me in many of its character dialog, and hype me up when the enemies really start running me over. The pace of battles can be intense, and seeing if A.I-controlled party members can pull through when programmed with certain moves is always such a thrill.

As one of Bopstik's first attempts at an actual substantial game, Code of Mars could never have come to fruition if it weren't for the absolutely amazing assets made available by the many talented artists on OGA. In the end, this game is dedicated to them, for the hand they played in it whether they're aware of it or not. Special mentions to composers "symphony", "iamoneabe", "Zane Little Music" and "You're Perfect Studio" whose tracks helped bring the game to life.

"Code Of Mars" is available for mobile on Google Play, or on browsers via itch.io.

Thank you all for reading, and I really hope you enjoy whatever time you spend trying out...